


Out of the Blue and Into the Black

by Lucky107



Series: Only You (And You Alone) [10]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Conditioning, Delirium, F/M, Gen, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 21:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: They’ve crossed a point of no return this time.





	1. Out of the Blue and Into the Black

_Wake up!_

The words drift into her conscience like the echo in a canyon.

The ripe scent of smoke and ash clings to her nose with an accentuated sweetness, reminiscent of a Sunday barbecue, and for a moment she entertains the idea that she might be dreaming.

It feels as if she’s trapped inside of a nightmare from which she cannot awake, but she knows that this is no dream.

Not after Walker—

_Open your eyes!_

 

Sunny Regis sits up too fast and the world spins, causing shadows of nearby inanimate objects to dance like ghosts in her periphery. With each labored breath she sucks into her hungry lungs, the redness in her vision bleeds away into the cool blue hues of the night.

Spittle coats her chin - spittle and somebody else’s blood - and that manic eye, fighting to decipher fact from fiction, remains unseeing as it searches the subconscious for answers.

Even though she’s still wearing her Whitetail green, the whitetail within is being consumed by the hunger of the wolf.

“I’m gonna get you outta here, okay?”

A single upward glance reveals a silhouette standing just outside of the cage that confines her and in the dim firelight a silver badge winks like a star. It’s Deputy Staci Pratt - and he appears to be fiddling with the lock on her cage. “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay? Only _you_ —”

“Hey—”

 _Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked_ —

The voice comes from the cage opposite Sunny’s where another Whitetail, his head shaven and his white eyes sunken into his gaunt face, stands tall. There’s a familiarity within his features that reminds her that he was once human.

Now, however, the man clings to the steel bars, the only barrier between him and the ground below, the ferocious intensity of his grip draining his knuckles white. The thin skin of his face pulls and threatens to tear as he tries to squeeze himself right through the bars, determined to survive.

Only in that moment does she realise with a frigid certainty that this man is dying.

“What about me?” The man pleads, desperate, hoarse. “What about _me_?”

“Pratt—”

But he turns and roars, “ _You_ aren’t strong enough—”

Staci Pratt transforms into Jacob Seed: he puffs up his chest as he roars at the starving Whitetail and the man shrinks back into his cage like a trembling lamb. It’s a sight that both frightens Sunny in its familiarity and entices her to find her feet in an act of self-preservation.

She stumbles on her hands and knees as she tries to rein her body in, but is unable to conjure up even a facade of strength that might appease the other prisoners.

— _and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns_.

Before she knows what’s come over her tears have clouded her vision and she reaches for the cage bar, a crutch, in her damp-eye blindness, but finds instead that Staci’s hand is waiting like a scene out of a Cinderella fairy tale.

“You have to get out of here, before it starts again.”

In her stupor, Sunny reaches out for the Whitetail as Staci walks her by and murmurs an incoherent, “I’m sorry.”

 

By the time those large wooden doors close at her back, the courtyard has become a sea of whispering ghosts.

_What about me?_

The hollow faces of all the men and women that Sunny cannot save stare back at her from the shadows of the St. Francis Veterans Center, layering so many whispers atop one another that she can no longer make out each individual plea.

She leans on Staci’s narrow shoulder, a crutch, as he navigates the long, winding corridors that walk them through a museum of systemic abuse. Chipped white paint peels away to expose a blood-soaked foundation just beneath the surface and the battered upholstery comes undone at the seams, springs and foam exposed, vulnerable.

It’s a macabre labyrinth of the torture and suffering that haunts the halls of their captor’s mind and, in some sick way, Jacob Seed almost begins to take on a more human shape in Sunny’s mind.

_What about **me**?_

Step by step, she weans herself off of the crutch.

Where the adrenaline fails her and she trips over fallen debris, the determination of the Whitetail - of Eli Palmer - succeeds in keeping her on her feet.

It takes a lot longer to navigate through the hospital tonight than it ever has in her dreams, when she’s made to run a rat race on Jacob’s clock, but this time she manages to accomplish the feat without a single drop of blood on her hands.

Staci opens the large door that awaits them to reveal a sparse, but clearly lived-in office bathed in pale blue moonlight—this time it’s all _real_.

But Sunny’s beginning to suspect that it’s _always_ been real.

It’s always only ever been _her_ —

“He knows you’re ready to do it,” Staci says, interrupting that thought to draw her attention to a large map. “Look: trials. See? He’s got it all planned out.”

The map appears to be a standard tourist edition that covers all of the hiking trails in the Whitetail Mountains. Upon closer inspection, however, there’s a pin stuck into every entrance to every bunker ever built within the region - including both entrances to the Wolf’s Den.

Pain strikes Sunny like a sudden bolt of lightening inside the head and she staggers back in retreat, colliding with a large wooden table set up in the center of the room.

A picture of Eli Palmer is shaken loose from the rest of the documents and glides to the floor like an autumn leaf.

Like a moth to a flame, Sunny is drawn to the fallen picture and she picks it up from the floor.

In her shock she moves to return Eli to his place among several other documents upon the table, and there she discovers what appears to be a blueprint. “Pratt—” Sunny calls as she clears several papers to reveal a detailed floor plan of the Wolf’s Den, if the crude red penmanship is anything to go by.

Wait a second—

Is that _her_ handwriting?

“You can’t ever go back,” Staci warns. “You understand? You can’t _ever_ go back.”

But Sunny _doesn’t_ understand. She doesn’t understand the accuracy of Jacob’s intel displayed on the map or the level of detail contained within what appear to be official blueprints of the Wolf’s Den. She doesn’t understand how her own handwriting could be present on such incriminating documents in Jacob’s office.

She stares down at that picture of Eli, tracing his brow and his cheek bone, the way his hair falls upon his broad shoulders with a trembling finger—

Staci takes hold of Sunny’s wandering hand.

He’s warm.

 _Alive_ —

“Truck’s gotta be there,” he murmurs as he leads her toward the illuminated window. “Gotta get on that truck.”

“Truck?” Sunny asks, still disoriented by everything that she’s seen.

“I studied the route for weeks,” Staci relays, helping her out onto a stone balcony that overlooks the courtyard. From way up here Jacob can observe the entire compound. The _suffering_. “It’s the only way out.”

As if on cue, a large white truck appears on the horizon and it barrels down the old dirt road, rolling right through the front gate. It’s impossible to speculate what might be arriving to such a place under the cover of darkness, but Staci is right: it appears to be the only reliable mode of transportation in and out of the compound.

“Staci, I—”

“You’ll be safe if you don't—”

A civil defense siren pierces the silence and bright lights flash across the compound, splashing the cool blue night in a vibrant shade of red.

 _Only you can make all this world seem right_ …

It’s all Sunny can do to twist her fingers into the front of Staci’s shirt right then and pull him down into a hungry kiss, determined to fight back against the ravenous hunger that dwells deep inside of her. Kissing him feels so innately human that it chases away the monster - if only for a moment.

“I—” he fits in, a breathless growl, and his hand comes up to tangle into her hair, to hold on and not let go. “I never got your name.”

“Sunny—”

 _Only you can make the darkness bright_ …

In spite of the combined effort to ward off the darkness, the effects of Jacob’s conditioning come on strong and Sunny’s knees begin to shake beneath her weight. Her heart flutters against her chest like a bird trying to break free of its cage and all conscious thought is being overwritten by a compulsive need to hunt, to _kill_.

Even in her current state Staci doesn’t stand a chance against the monster that lies in wait just beneath the surface.

She’s been groomed to become a soldier of a different stripe, even by Jacob’s standards: she’s a threat to even Jacob himself, a fact which makes her both an exciting and dangerous new toy.

The next step is clear to Staci in that moment.

“ _Sunny_ ,” he repeats, his lips numb, but her green eye is blank and unseeing. “I’m sorry—”

With a rough shove he sends her back over the short balcony rail and she rushes towards the roof of the truck below.


	2. The Truth of a Thousand Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It marks the first time she’s been completely aware of the transition.

Sunny doesn’t dream.

When she comes to from within the dark, she lies completely still and stares up into the waiting night sky.

She can’t be far from the veterans center yet because the warmth of Staci’s lips still lingers, but everything else is completely numb.

The world remains still around her as she rolls herself over onto her stomach for a bit of preliminary reconnaissance. She’s lying on a cold sheet of white steel - the roof of the truck that Staci had been so adamant about them catching in the courtyard.

His plan had worked, at least in part.

But she finds herself alone.

A subtle rustle in the nearby grass kickstarts Sunny’s heart, but when she turns her head the familiar silhouette of Jess Black is pulling an arrow free from a dead man’s skull.

“Sunny?”

“Up here,” Sunny groans. “Any sign of Deputy Pratt?”

“Nada,” Jess confirms. “Are you—”

Radio static cackles between them like a campfire and Sunny holds her breath, half expecting to hear Jacob’s voice.

“Regis? Can you hear me? Regis, come in.” It’s Eli Palmer - and he sounds real shaken up. “If you can hear me, I need you to haul ass to the Grill Streak crossroads. _Now_.”

 

Standing at the crossroads where the infamous Grill Streak sits in ruin, Sunny and Jess stare up into the blue glow of an illuminated screen as a video plays on its loop like ants looking up into the sun.

Red seeps into Sunny’s vision like spilled wine soaks into a tablecloth, her single eye left unseeing. It marks the very first time she’s been completely aware of the transition: there’s no music, save for the televised echo of Jacob Seed’s voice, which reverberates off of the Whitetail Mountains, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

_Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man?_

_P-please… no more…_

Sunny awakens into her dream, as if on another plane of existence, and she chases after the sound of Jacob’s voice just as she always has, first through the Grandview Hotel and then into the veterans center.

As she runs, tripping over the small rocks and roots that mark the forest floor, she reverts back into what has become her most natural state of being: _human_.

In her heart Sunny knows what she is.

It frightens her to walk so close to the edge.

But the combination of adrenaline and anger coursing through her veins makes each neck she snaps along the way a little bit more satisfying than it was before. It’s as though a dam in her mind has been broken and everything is spilling free.

Killing, she discovers, comes just as naturally to her as anything else.

And it feels _good_.

_P-please… no more…_

With every shadow she eliminates, Staci Pratt’s agony echoes back on her as a constant reminder that he gave _everything_ to get her out of that compound tonight - and she can’t let that sacrifice be in vain.

Sunny rounds another corner and comes upon her next victim, snapping the man’s neck like a twig before her eyes are given a chance to adjust to the light. Where white paint once screamed SACRIFICE within the dark hangs a Whitetail Militia flag.

It’s a perfect replica of the one in the Wolf’s Den—

Time stands still as Sunny prepares her stomach for the glance down at the mess of black hair and Whitetail green that dangles limp in her hands, confirming her worst fear.

The room spins with a force that threatens to knock her right off her feet and the body, still warm, hits the cold cement floor with a hollow _thump_. Sunny dares a cautious step backwards from the scene of the crime, but bile rises in her throat in absence of his name.

_You can’t ever go back. You understand? You can’t **ever** go back_ —

_You’ll be safe if you don’t_ —

Puke splatters across the toes of her boots.

Jacob Seed manifests from the shadows like some sort of demon, leering at her, _smiling_. He’s not blind to his ability to make her dance like a puppet on a string, but he enjoys every second of her drawn-out agony.

“Hey, only _you_ could have gotten this close. Only _you_ could have earned his trust. It was always only ever _you_ ,” he offers, careful to step around the mess Sunny has made. “Good work. You did it—you passed your test. You made your sacrifice.”

In a perfect parallel to the very first time they met, Jacob closes the space between them until his face is so close to Sunny’s that she can feel the warmth of his breath as it tickles across her skin.

With her back against the wall, there’s nothing she can do to stop the hand that comes up or the large thumb that wipes the corner of her lips clean. His touch is rough, aggressive even, with a shadow of pity. “But now you are alone—and you are weak. And we know what happens to the weak…”

_Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man?_

Sunny thinks about Staci Pratt in that moment, of the reflection of his silver badge in the dark, and that’s when she realises there’s a silver reflection against Jacob’s chest.

It’s the reflection of a key.

It’s the key to Jacob’s bunker, she realises, and it’s the key to Staci.

If she had been a stronger person, she might have just snatched it from Jacob’s neck right then and there—

_P-please… no more…_

But she doesn’t.

Sunny is weak, just like Jacob says, because she can still see the lump of dead flesh that was once Eli Palmer lying on the floor of his very own bunker.

As if aware of her thoughts, Jacob pats the key and announces, “I’ll be outside waiting for you.”

There’s a flash of white light and for a moment Sunny truly believes that Jacob has shot her in his parting.

Instead, she has been thrust back against the hard concrete with force enough to crack a goose egg at the base of her skull and the impact of the blow spots her vision.

“What the fuck did you do?” Wheaty’s voice demands and the cold barrel of a gun presses snug beneath Sunny’s chin. That’s when the severity of the situation finally takes hold. “You fucking _killed_ him, you fucking piece of shit!”

Three years of trust and loyalty ebb away like soil erosion.

Eli was the closest thing Sunny had ever known to a proper father—and the Whitetails, a family.

The warmth of Eli’s soft flesh still burns hot in her trembling hands, which do nothing to oppose Wheaty’s threat, and they will likely burn on forever as a constant reminder of her crime.

The shock is still so raw that she can’t even muster tears.

_Do it_ —

“Wait—!”

And everything comes to a crashing halt like a highway pile-up.

Wheaty has every intention of blowing Sunny’s head wide open where she stands, but there’s a desperation in Tammy’s voice that provides a distraction and she’s able to wrestle the gun from Wheaty. He fights her for it, of course, blinded by his rage and the sheer audacity of Sunny’s non-response, but Tammy is stronger.

“Listen to me!” She commands as she places herself in between Wheaty and Sunny. “Wheaty, it was _Jacob_ —we’ve seen this before. Ronnie, Parker - this is what he _does_. And we let him right in.”

Wheaty releases the gun reluctantly and takes a single step back from Sunny.

Ten minutes ago they were best friends.

What the fuck happened?


End file.
